


The Case of the Invisible Man

by Lue4028



Series: Rites of Passage [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Other, Parentlock
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-05-22
Packaged: 2018-03-30 09:45:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3932179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lue4028/pseuds/Lue4028
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock deduces the identity of John's alleged boyfriend, or tries to, anyway</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> *Mary is John's daughter; Mary Morstan, her biological mother, is deceased  
> *Sherlock and John are not married, though Mary believes them to be  
> *Mary got married last week

It’s a remarkably peaceful morning in 221B with the dull ambient noise of traffic outside and a weak breeze drafting from the window, wafting in the vanilla curtains. John reposes on his armchair with lukewarm mug of tea on the coffee table, reading the morning standard when

“ _ **Mary!**_ ” Sherlock thunders from the kitchen, and John sighs, lifting his listless eyes from the page. Sherlock storms into their humble commonspace like a whirlwind, looking indignant with his shirt collar button strained and eyes vibrant, violent green. “Where in God’s name—“

 “She's not here,” John replies tediously, rubbing his temple, “Married now.”

 Sherlock growls, tetchy, gaze flickering aside. “Blast.” he says, then he retorts temperamentally, decisively pointing his index finger into the ground, “I want her _back,_ John.”

 “I know.”

 “'I know?' What do you mean _'I know?'”_ Sherlock demands, incensed and needlessly belligerent, “Are you content to just _sit_ there in resignation?” He regards John’s impassive air in disdain.

 John grimaces, eyes closed, brain hurting. He cocks his head to the side against the tension in his neck, and rests his head wearily against his fingers. “Sherlock you really should've thought of this _before_ you walked her down the bloody aisle.”

 Sherlock lets out a strangled cry of frustration, then turns on his heel, returning to his machinations in the kitchen. John doesn’t want to know what he’s doing in there.

 John consoles himself by resuming his read on the drama over taxes. Time slinks idly by, Sherlock’s forensics glassware clinking in the kitchen, the skittish curtains rustling restlessly, and the front door opening and closing downstairs with a far-away, unnoticed thump.

 A knock sounds on their living room door, and John discards his paper, hauling himself up to get it. Mary is standing in the threshold, now in slacks instead of a dress as per her usual preference, and a green trench coat. “Oh thank god,” he sighs with relief, “She’s back.”

 “I thought you just said she was still on sex holiday!” Sherlock hollers from the kitchen. John visibly cringes, hair standing up on end. But it occurs to him that Mary is supposed to be on said holiday.

 “Mary, what are you doing here?” John asks, confuzzled. Mary puts her index finger against her lips, swearing him to secrecy. On a secret mission, it seems.

  “Only been married a week and we’re already keeping secrets?” John arches an eyebrow as she enters, undoing her gloves.

 “I’m not really supposed to be here,” Mary mutters distractedly, panning her gaze over the room.

 “So I gathered.”

 Mary wanders off without further explanation, shedding her coat.

 “John she’s cheating on him with us,” Sherlock’s voice rises triumphantly from the far-off kitchen, “Could it be she loves us more than the husband!” His voice is a ray of light, an outburst of playful, gleeful, ecstatic warmth that is in stark contrast to the mournful week-long spell of temperamental, overall irritable behaviour and desolately sad violin music John has taken the brunt of thus far. Sherlock had even veered off into playing something about unrequited love that had rendered John unable to breathe and begging the ceiling quietly for mercy. 

 John shakes his head in discontentment, knowing what goes up, must go down, or in the case of Sherlock’s new-found hopes, crash and burn into one of his sinister black moods. Mary exhales a exasperated, amused sigh at the kitchen’s infallible egomania, veering toward the cluttered mantle above the fireplace with Sherlock’s dusty bat and beetle vivarium.

 “I can’t find my passport,” she tells John, to the discredit of Sherlock’s pet theory.

 “Aren’t they upstairs?” John tilts his head out the door.

 “No I left mine down here, somewhere…” Mary mutters, venturing over to the breakfast table, littered with the mail, some Tescos receipts, Sherlock’s daily uneaten toast.

 “Where is it?” she contemplates, pushing the fringe out of her face, “Maybe I have to ask Sherlock where I put it.”

 “Well, be warned, he’s in a mood,” John says with a wry glance to the kitchen and closes the front door behind him. Mary heads over to the sofa, looking in between and under the seat cushions.

 “It’s in your back pocket,” Sherlock informs her making his entrance sipping from John’s tea mug, looking much more civilized.

 Mary goes wide-eyed and checks her pocket, pulls out the elusive booklet. She flips it around. “Oh. Well, shit.”

 Sherlock leans in. “But you already knew that,” he whispers cleverly. Mary looks at him lamely, with an unimpressed glare that’s not quite so good as John’s, but still a good effort.

 Mary clears her throat and speaks to John’s earlier comment. “But you seem to be in a better mood dad,” she says, largely to derail John’s attention from Sherlock’s remark. But John is already distracted.

 “Is that my tea?” John whines, leering at the beverage clasped in Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock looks at John’s heartbroken expression and seems genuinely fazed.

 “Sorry,” he says apologetically, “Shall I make you another?” John frowns. “Did you.. did you want it back?” Sherlock offers instead.

 John looks at the mug, then looks at Sherlock. It’s really not much of a decision. He wants his tea. “Yes.”

 Sherlock glances at the tea, then regrettably parts with the mug, restoring the beverage to its rightful owner. Mary raises an eyebrow, watching the interaction with the two of them making over-soft eyes at each other, and, rather surprisingly, the tea, until Sherlock resumes the conversation.

 “Indeed,” he concurs with Mary’s statement about John’s mood, turning on his heel and taking off as he speaks.

 “Gotten himself a new girlfriend, as it turns out,” he remarks disinterestedly, outstretching his hands with a shrug. He flops down on the shuffled sofa cushions and picks up John’s newspaper, reads the introduction upside-down, then throws it over his head on the vacant portion of the settee, for what little the hell being raised about taxes is worth to him. His legs are tangled over the green, leather curve of sofa arm, and he stares idly at the ceiling, curls a jumble on the leather.

 Needless to say, the news falls ungracefully on Mary’s unsuspecting ears. She looks as though the world around her has been shattered like so many fragments of a not-so-fortunate mirror getting ploughed over by a stampede of monster trucks. Her eyes dart to John, who’s minding his tea, in a demand of how he intends to answer for this. He sees the look on her face, and his expression goes from one of sheer innocence, to one that is slightly miffed and glaring narrowly at Sherlock.

 “Sherlock,” John chides him. 

“Boyfriend?” Sherlock hazards uncertainly, hands merged together and face turning partway in John’s general direction. John closes his eyes as he responds with unerring control.

“Sherlock, shut up,” he chirps with a carefully delineated margin of tolerance, but the damage is done. Mary is looking at John in abject horror.

"Dad?" Mary’s voice sounds like glass, her deep blue eyes weighing down on him as though she doesn’t recognize him anymore. John swallows, feeling a sudden surge of guilt.

"Now, listen Mary.." he says gingerly. He takes a reconciliatory step forward, but Mary takes one back.

"How could you? Dad, you promised," she tells him, looking downtrodden, wounded even. John shakes his head.

"Mary, it's not like that," he tries to tell her with a harmless, open handed gesture.

"I can’t believe that the moment I leave you-" Mary begins in utter incomprehension.

“I didn’t-! Listen to me, I'm telling you this isn't what it looks like,” he raises his voice compellingly, and the sound of it rings with earnestness, “Don't listen to him, Mary. He's trying to make you come back."

Sherlock stiffens, irises contracting as though he's been unceremoniously stabbed, "I beg your pardon?” Sherlock demands with a vengeance, rolling over with a grip on the frame of the sofa, “Don’t be inane! I do not falsify facts to win over _women_ ," he sneers in distaste.

“Okay, Sherlock,” John turns around with a cheery tone of voice, “let’s pretend for a second that you do not do that—“

“ _My good doctor_ ,” Sherlock flares, coming onto his feet, “Really, I adore you, I think you’re a superlative example of a human being, but you really have confused yourself into a grievous state of error this time haven’t you.”

John deflates, giving the wallpaper a sour, tongue-chewing look, “Have I now, detective?”

“Tell me John, Was I not _right_ in my deduction about Irene’s laughably ‘uncrackable’ airliner code (and I _was_ right, though that inevitably backfired a little..), Was not I _right_ in everything I told Janine regarding the guests at the wedding and on and on etc (excluding that tiny little white lie at the end which hardly counts and you know it so if you would kindly get over that?) and, ultimately, did the same tactics not also happen to work marvelously well on you when I was _right_ about your sister’s phone? (mostly, anyway),”

Sherlock lists all of this in 2.5 seconds and the two of them are barely able to discern what he’s saying, much less realise that he's included John in his list of "women",

“The point being, in case you are not keen on the pattern, is that I have been consistently _right_ , John- When have I needed to distort the data to impress anyone? You’re the one _falsifying facts_ to win _her_ over, not me,” Sherlock turns on him, indicating Mary.

“Then tell me about this imaginary boyfriend, Sherlock!” John humors him with a smile, locking eyes with the detective, “What’s his name? What does he look like? What does he do? What does he _wear?_   Dry-clean or machine-wash? ” he lifts one hand, then the other, then drops both, “Is he invisible, because as you may (or may not) have noticed I was in the flat the whole week taking care of you with the only other bloke I’ve said so much as three words to being the self-service machine at Tesco!”

“I don’t know, I thought perhaps you could tell us!” Sherlock reciprocates with equal exasperation.

“You don’t know!” John rallies, throwing out a hand, “So for all we know he could be in this room with us right now and we’d be none the wiser!”

Mary frowns. 

“What I do know is that you ate eggs for breakfast, washed your mouth with fluoride twice today and-” John rolls his eyes at Sherlock’s mild obsession with his Listerine usage but Sherlock grabs his wrist meaningfully, and John’s attention swivels back to him, “Look!”

“At what!” John looks down helplessly at his hand that the sleuth has brought to eye level, Sherlock glaring at him condemningly like the fact he’s a leftie is self-incriminating.

“Explain yourself!” Sherlock demands, John looks at him like he’s speaking Cantonese. Explain why he overused the Listerine? Sherlock’s the one monitoring how many millilitres of Listerine he uses. Is _that_ normal? Perhaps _he_ should be demanding an explanation out of _Sherlock_.

“Because I couldn’t recall if I had already!” John blurts out, trying to recall the reasoning behind his auto-piloted, and frankly, unimportant, actions this morning, “So I rinsed again in case I hadn’t; but thank you, now I know that I , _had_ , in fact, already done so—“ he elaborates, then realizes how stupid unnecessary the explanation is, “Dammit what does any of that have to do with—“ he gnashes his teeth, swallowing his anger, then resumes composedly, “I literally cannot fathom what possible relevance _eggs_ or _Listerine_ or _any of this_ could have."

“The _relevance_ ,” Sherlock declares vehemently in his baritone voice, “is that you’ve mentally reverted to a time when you ate high-cholesterol foods, i.e. your bachelor days, and that you subconsciously want to kiss someone."

“Subconsciously want to kiss someone? Seriously? Because of the Listerine?" he presents the question again, taking apart his logic with a sort of derisive rhetoricalness, "Are you listening to yourself, Sherlock? How on earth do you get that from _mouth wash_?"

“It was the Altoid you took afterward that was the determining factor,” he says that like it's a conviction to murder in the first degree, but in the heat of the moment John fails to comprehend what the Altoid, on top of it all, could possibly mean, other than the truth of the matter which is that he likes British mints that taste like green tea. So does Sherlock. So does everyone. Who the hell doesn't? 

John almost takes a moment to face-palm, but thinks better of it. “You blow my mind, Sherlock- Really, I don’t know what you want me to say, other than nothing you're saying is making sense or even the slightest bit true and that there’s nothing remarkable about my hand!” he maintains desperately.

“Exactly!” Sherlock insists, like that self-evidently proves his point all the more.

“No ring,” Mary says as the thought occurs to her.

“So I forgot today,” John sighs apathetically, snatching his wrist from Sherlock’s grasp. He then turns to Mary pointedly, “And that ring, mind you, means that I was married to your mother, not to him.” He points to the raven-head beside him, whose been residing there prettily, in their flat, for the past twenty-five years, for decorative purposes. He's taken to wearing the ring as a symbol of how he is _not in love with Sherlock Holmes_ , although it backfires constantly, as in this present example, by suggesting he's married to him.

Mary disregards John’s claims about her imaginary mother, and instead cuts to a more pressing issue. “What about his alibi though?” Mary asks Sherlock.

“He can’t use _me_ as an alibi! We’re _married!_ ” Sherlock exclaims like she’s being ridiculous and flounces back on the couch. Mary looks confused. John looks as though he might just blow his brains out. He tries to reconcile with the fact that as a result of one miniscule, redundant step in his regiment this morning, he’s being _falsely_ accused of cheating in a _false_ relationship with a flat-out  _false_ liar. At this rate, he might as well be getting some.

“Sherlock, we could have a long-winded conversation about _Listerine_ , or you can go on and tell her I’m not seeing anyone,” John tells him in his authoritative, putting-his-foot-down voice. Keeping his eyes trained on Sherlock, he jabs his finger toward their daughter like he’s telling a dog to go fetch.

Sherlock narrows his eyes defiantly and remains mute.

“Go on,” he goads him, cocks his head with one of those cursory head tilts that exudes quiet and undeniable confidence, “Tell her I’m not seeing anyone else.”

Sherlock sees the conviction in his eyes and somberly feels as though he has to comply.

“He’s not seeing anybody else,” Sherlock admits tenuously, and John is satisfied. But Sherlock is restless, unable to resist the temptation to add on, “ _And_ he has a new boyfriend.”

John’s gaze slides over to meet Sherlock’s again and he smiles tightly in a way that says _you wanna fight?_

Despite the obvious illogic of the two mutually exclusive conditions Sherlock has presented, his statement seems to make marvelous sense to Mary. It irritates John because ever since that day he told Mary they were married, Sherlock seems to get off on telling Mary all kinds of wack things, and she believes him because Sherlock is allegedly ‘always right’.

Mary notices the mounting danger in John’s eyes and intervenes. “Alright! Alright, I believe you,” Mary steps in between the two of them, looking amused. “No violence. Violence is bad,” she tells the father more prone to violence, keeping him back with a hand.

John unfolds his arms and sighs with a roll of the eyes, giving a resigned and fairly bitchy display of his ‘whatever’ expression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't even think it's that they're men. I think it's just a case of stupid + stupid makes for too much stupid in the room.  
> At any rate, this was only part one of the epilogue to The Way I Danced with You. It's one scene but so longggg. Why it has to be, I wish I knew. DXX Below is John's Listerine/mint usage. Take a gander.


	2. Interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mary: So you monitor John 's Listerine usage.  
> Sherlock: Amongst other things.  
> Mary: You wouldn’t- you wouldn’t happen to have a graph, would you?  
> Sherlock: Of his Listerine usage?  
> Mary: Yeah.  
> Sherlock: Yes. I mean, well no, actually no.  
> Mary: No?  
> Sherlock: It’s uh in my mind palace so its technically not real. Second floor.  
> Mary: I see.  
> Sherlock: I mean I could, I could print it out for you, if you wanted.  
> Mary: That would be good. You could do that.  
> Sherlock: Just the last week or?  
> Mary: Make it past two. You know. To observe any potential changes since I left.  
> Sherlock: Yeah alright.  
> Mary: Also.. could you give us the Altoid intake too?  
> Sherlock: Just Altoids or the Icebreakers as well?  
> Mary: He had icebreakers?  
> Sherlock: Yes, that and another miscellaneous brand sold in tourist shops that reportedly goes under the title of "make-out mints".  
> Mary: Oh.  
> Sherlock: I'll just include it all.  
> Mary: Maybe throw in a breakfast diary while you're at it?  
> Sherlock: Done.

A Study in John Watson: The (Slightly Obsessive) John Report

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mary: Sherlock, you do realise this means he met his boyfriend on the day of the actual wedding?  
> Sherlock: I know.  
> Mary: And you still can't figure it out?  
> Sherlock: What, _you_ know who it is?  
>  Mary: Yes.  
> Sherlock: ...Is it Wallace?  
> Mary: Does he even know Wallace?  
> Sherlock: Behind closed doors, I suspect he does.  
> John: What are you two doing?  
> Sherlock: What does it look like John? We're tracking water consumption in our sprinklers.  
> John: We don't have sprinklers.  
> Sherlock: Oh.  
> John: This is about the Listerine isn't it?  
> Sherlock: No.  
> John: You actually _graphed_ my Listerine use.   
>  Sherlock: No I didn't.  
> John: GIVE me that, you blinking moron.


End file.
